No: Limit promotes energy independence: Front Burner

Prices for gasoline are significantly lower than they were a year ago. The American Automobile Association says that regular gasoline recently cost about $2.30 per gallon in Florida. Consumers last April were paying over $3.70 per gallon.

And Floridians have only just begun to see real savings to their household budgets from these lower fuel prices. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts households will save an average of $750 this year over 2014 from lower gasoline prices.

Consider the broader effects of lower fuel prices, such as lower transportation costs. Consumers are benefiting from the equivalent of a huge, across-the-board tax cut. For folks on fixed incomes, cheaper gasoline prices are especially good news.

Yet some in Washington, D.C., want to change longstanding energy policy that could cut short this enormous boon to consumers by removing a pillar of our energy policy that has had bipartisan consensus for 40 years — that's the law that keeps American crude oil here at home.

Keeping U.S. crude in America is a policy that has been a mainstay of our energy-independence policy since the first of three oil embargoes in the 1970s led to long gas lines. While exporting precious U.S. crude oil overseas might line the pockets of a few sectors of the economy, it wouldn't result in broad-based benefits to consumers and businesses.

Fuel prices have fallen because America is enjoying a true renaissance in energy — we're producing much more domestic oil than in the past few decades. Refineries take that oil and process it into all sorts of petroleum products, including diesel fuel, home heating oil, jet fuel, and of course, gasoline for your car or truck.

As American crude has become more plentiful, U.S. refineries have been replacing imported oil with lower-cost American oil. Refineries operate in a very competitive business environment, and have been passing along savings to consumers from those lower domestic crude prices. That's resulting in more than $9 billion in annual savings for consumers, according to a report from Barclays Bank.

Some have claimed that there is too much U.S. crude for American refiners to handle (and therefore exports are necessary), but that's simply not the case. A study released last year showed definitively that American refiners have the capacity to refine all the American light oil projected to be produced for the foreseeable future.

Although there are obvious consumer benefits to keeping U.S. crude at home, keep in mind that crude export restrictions also help America become more energy independent. For every barrel of oil shipped to a foreign country, such as China, we'd have to import an additional barrel of oil from a foreign producer, such as Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela, or other members of the OPEC cartel. That would reverse the trend of the past few years, where we've been importing less high-cost foreign oil.

So exporting American crude really doesn't make much sense — unless folks in D.C. have decided that energy independence is no longer important. But one glance at the headlines will tell you that it's better to rely on North American sources for our oil rather than so many unstable suppliers, such as the chaotic Middle East.

The export lobby would like you to believe that all of a sudden the United States is producing so much oil that we're practically energy independent. But the facts show otherwise. Even though domestic production has just returned to 1970s levels, we're still importing far more foreign oil than we did in the 1970s.

The lobby in D.C. that wants to export American crude is a powerful one. That's why it's critical that members of Congress hear from their constituents about this issue.

Keeping U.S. crude here at home is simple common sense. The law limiting crude exports benefits all Floridians, supporting households, businesses and our nation's security.

Jay Hauck is the executive director of The CRUDE Coalition, a group of merchant refiners that includes Alon USA, Monroe Energy, PBF Energy, and Philadelphia Energy Solutions.